Volithur waited almost an hour for the Castellan to emerge from his office, then a snap of the man’s fingers and a gesture to his feet commanded Volithur to heel like a dog. He followed without wasting any effort wasted on feeling slighted, eager to receive the next reward for his impulsive lies.
They went to a nearby room on the ground floor, within which sat a small building. The walls were made of small bricks that were held in place by a capstone that also served as the ceiling. Between the walls of the chamber and those of the surrounding room, there was just enough space for a human body to squeeze between the two planes.
Volithur was pushed into a spot against the exterior wall farthest from the chamber’s entrance. “Stay here, be quiet, and once the family are done you will be rewarded with fifteen minutes.” The Castellan abandoned him in the cramped alley to be ready to greet the nobles coming for their time in the chamber.
Other bodies began to squeeze into the tight space, until Volithur found himself squeezed in on from both sides. From what he could see from his place, all of the individuals were level four. The man to his right studied Volithur for a moment before nodding. “Hard to grudge you the chamber when you’re so obviously in need,” the man said.
The woman on Volithur’s left snorted. “Does it sting less having the fruits of your labor stolen by a fellow commoner?”
“Stolen?” Volithur stared at the woman whose shoulder pressed tight against him.
“Aye, that’s right,” she responded.
The man whispered an explanation. “Our job in the fifth household is to perform aura cultivation throughout the entire day to collect as much ambient cosmic energy as possible. Every night, we squeeze into place around the chamber and use our domains to release the energy into the interior. In a few hours, the nobles scheduled for the chamber that day receive the benefit of our hard work. A dozen of us sacrifice our gains to power up the nobles, four of them at a time. In return we get to live lives free of manual labor.”
“All of us have the talent to be so much more than we are,” the woman grumbled.
“Only due to the training we received as part of the deal,” the man returned. He nudged Volithur in the ribs. “Just don’t waste this opportunity, lad. We work hard cultivating this energy and the nobles squander most of it. If you make level two today, I’ll be content.”
“I’d rather keep the cosmic energy for my own use,” the woman muttered.
They then heard the Castellan warmly greeting various masters by name and went utterly silent. Thus began Volithur’s extended ordeal. He knew it lasted slightly over an hour and a half based on the time being called out on the band every fifteen minutes. In that time, he cramped up from his awkward posture – the space being too tight for him to do anything other than stand upright. The walls dripped with re-condensed sweat from the hot bodies packed around the perimeter. At about the halfway point, the commoners around him began to grunt and groan and mutter curses as the discomfort of wringing out the energetic contents of their souls.
Finally, the sound of the stone plug being removed from the doorway of the chamber announced the end of the session. A few seconds later, the Castellan called out for the staff to exit. Volithur climbed out with them, and knew from the crafty expression on the Castellan’s face he was about to get screwed over.
“How many of you still have energy reserves?”
Of the twelve people present, only five raised their hands. The Castellan dismissed those unable to participate and gestured for Volithur to enter the chamber. Before placing the plug, the Castellan offered a vial of what Volithur immediately recognized as moon water elixir. “To make up for the chamber being understaffed,” the Castellan said.
Volithur accepted the vial with a humble bow and placid features, which twisted into a rage-filled snarl the moment the chamber was sealed. He knew now that moon water elixir was nothing more than regular water infused with cosmic energy. The water didn’t come from Tian, so it hadn’t been deeply impacted by the flow of cosmic energy. It was just garbage passed off as an elixir so that people wouldn’t be disappointed when they received tea powder elixir – after all, they weren’t getting the worst elixir.
Nevertheless, Volithur drank down the resource he had been given. Then he began to practice aura cultivation with disciplined fervor. Though there were only a small fraction of the servants pouring energy into the chamber as before, the chamber itself was constructed from imported materials that slowly radiated stored cosmic energy – much like radioactive materials with extremely long half-lives. So in theory just sitting in the room would improve his outcome.
Practically speaking, however… he had been screwed over. The promise made by the Castellan had been fulfilled without costing the family any of their precious resources. Only five mostly-exhausted servants would be inconvenienced in the process, and if the benefit to Volithur wasn’t significant, that could be explained away as bad luck. At that moment, however, Volithur only had two options: make the most of it or pout like petulant child. He was too hungry for power to waste the opportunity, so he had to make the most of it.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Volithur fell into the rhythm of aura cultivation, strictly adhering to the instructions granted to him by Ulysses. He primed his aura, extended it in a permissive state, hardened it, dragged it back towards his body, then opened his soul aperture to suck down the cosmic energy. Again and again, he pulled in as much energy as he could manage, jaw tight with rage because the quality inside the chamber barely exceeded that of the exterior.
He strained to the utmost, but the stone plug scraped free promptly upon the announcement of the next fifteen minute interval’s end. He had entered at least five minutes following the previous time mark, so he had received perhaps half of the time promised. The Castellan snapped his fingers. “Enough dawdling, Ward Harridan. Your time is up.”
Volithur emerged, stilled his features to stillness, and bowed towards the Castellan. “Thank you for this opportunity, Master Castellan.”
The Castellan drew himself up tall and gazed down imperiously. “This concludes all business between us. You will continue to receive an education in case the Lord General indeed desires you for his retinue as has been claimed. Otherwise, Ward Harridan, you would do well to scamper away to the place set aside for your kind.”
“As you command, Master Castellan.” Volithur smartly turned on his heel and marched out the door, then down the corridor, out into the main chamber of the pyramidal palace, through the exit closest to his destination, across the expansive lawn, and into the barracks.
A somewhat restored Thassily squinted at him from his hammock as he entered. “Where have you been, Harridan? You missed dinner!”
“I was busy getting scammed by the Castellan,” Volithur grumbled.
Within his soul, he felt like he was very close to achieving the breakthrough to level two. All the energy felt tight within him, like it had nowhere else to go. He wanted it to become just ever so slightly more dense so that it could penetrate the walls of his soul and level him up. Sitting in his hammock, he began to use body cultivation on what remained of the moon water elixir in his gut. That source was barely richer than attempting aura cultivation in the barracks – which itself was only a small improvement over mental cultivation.
There simply were no good sources of energy for him. Which meant he would have to substitute effort for resources. First, exhaust the elixir. Second, use his aura until the cosmic energy levels in the room dropped. Third, mental cultivation. It would either be enough or… well, he would just keep going until it was enough.
Determination beating strong inside him, Volithur set his intention and got to work carrying out his plan. Things would only get harder from here. More expensive. If he couldn’t overcome this hurdle, then he had no business thinking he could match the Sergeant’s achievement some day.
He cut his musings short as the dwindling energies from the elixir fell below an intensity he judged worthwhile and began to expand and contract his aura once more. The exertion returned maybe ten percent more cosmic energy than he invested into the operation. Had he been able to use a larger outlay, that would have been more than sufficient. Unfortunately, he could only maximize his return on investment if he used tiny quantities. A larger outlay resulted in a closed loop where he pulled back exactly what he put out in the first place, which was a lot of work for no gain.
The barracks grew dark and still he labored with his aura. On occasion, Volithur found himself drawing close to sleep and would have to get up from his hammock and pace the room to stir his blood. Always he returned to the hammock as cultivating while walking proved beyond his talents. Eventually, he found the local concentration of cosmic energy insufficient to continue and switched to mental cultivation.
As the energy within his soul grew infinitesimally denser, Volithur began to despair of the ordeal ever ending. He pushed through the exhaustion and his doubts that he could succeed. Eventually, the cosmic energy on the mental band depleted too much for him to make further use of it and he had to switch back to aural cultivation.
Midnight had passed already and he couldn’t understand why his soul hadn’t advanced yet. He had thought it saturated to the very peak back at the Evergreen Institute. Yet after all the cultivating he had done in the time since, nothing had happened. Worse, the atmospheric levels of cosmic energy had yet to replenish in his room, making his aural cultivation challenging.
With a fresh up-welling of determination, Volithur left his room to sit cross-legged on wet grass beneath a moonless, star-filled sky. The rate of absorption increased once more as he found more energy available to him. For a time, he worked his way towards his goal, barely aware that he was shivering in the early morning chill.
Yet sooner than he expected, the cultivation grew hard once more. For a few cycles of his aura, Volithur struggled to pinpoint what had changed. There seemed to still be sufficient levels of cosmic energy present in the air about him. What could be the problem?
Then he realized that it was not the collection of energy that proved a challenge, but rather the storage. The energy density within his soul had grown great enough that every attempt to squeeze in more was like trying to add more water to a full cup. It would not go where he wanted it to.
As the sky began to grow light, Volithur took a deep breath. He had been at work the entire night. There was no way he would let his efforts be in vain. Sealing all other apertures of his soul tight, Volithur began to work at the method he knew best: mental cultivation.
With obsessive focus, he took tiny gulps of cosmic energy in through his mind, pressing hard to force them inside, then sealing himself up to hold everything. Drips and drabs escaped his control time and again, but by the time the sun rose he had pushed to what he was absolutely certain was the precipice.
His soul strained and quivered under the load it carried. A single drop of cosmic energy would either advance his state of existence or rupture his very essence. Volithur slowly and carefully drew the last necessary ounce into his mind, strengthened his grip, and opened a tiny little gap in his aperture. With iron willpower, he pushed the drop into the half-solidified contents of his soul.